Re: NCName, QName and colons

"XML documents operated on by XPath must conform to the XML Namespaces
Recommendation [XML Names]."

Is this rule binding on an XSLT 2 processor as well (by virtue of
its association with XPath 2)?

   <xsl:template match="node()|@*">
       <xsl:copy>
           <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/>
       </xsl:copy>
   </xsl:template>

The error messages that I posted when initiating this thread a few weeks ago
gave me a forensic clue that the above might work (i.e. without an error
occurring).

Cheers
Justin Johansson

<original message>
This seems rather odd.

Running an XSLT identity transform over the following source document
with Saxon 9b produces the error underneath:

<:a:apple xmlns:a="foo">
  <banana/>
</:a:apple>

Obviously the source document is not valid XML but the error message
is confusing.

Since when was
1) a colon character allowed to start an NCName which a prefix is, and
2) a QName allowed to contain 2 colon characters
which the error message suggests?

Justin Johansson
</original message>